Quilters' Guide To The Galaxy

This was so fun! Here is my challenge piece for the Barn Quilts: "Quilters' Guide To The Galaxy". When I first saw the challenge for Barn Quilts I was not thrilled and inspired but then I began thinking I could do a nice landscape with a barn and put a quilt on it and as I started looking through my stash for fabric I came across this great space fabric for 2000 - which I'd never made anything with before - and I thought: "Wow! I could quilt the Moon!" And I thought about one of my favorite artists - Christo who wrapped fabric around all kinds of buildings and landscapes so what would a quilter do to the moon? I picked the thread spools block and hung a giant quilt on the moon and then thread stitched a rocket ship taking a group on the ultimate shop hop! The finished piece is 12 x 15.5, the moon/quilt is pieced, rocket is stitched, binding is fused and accented with silver gel pen and variegated thread. It was fun to free motion the craters onto the moon. This was made in DeKalb, IL. Thanks for this challenge topic!

Funky Wonky Barn Quilt

The challenge was to create a block for a Barn Quilt. A Barn Quilt is usually a big quilt (around 8'x8') that depicts one block. I chose to do my own version of a wonky log cabin block. This is my first attempt at a wonky log cabin, but I have to tell you, I was completely enamored with the marriage of modern + traditional. This whole idea of a log cabin (which was my very first quilt block ever! yipeee!!) with straight line quilting (modern) and white space (modern) along with crazy awesome modern fabrics (Dan Bennett's Cosmos from Free Spirit) with the added traditional folk hand quilting (middle block) just made me smile through the whole process. LOVE that!

Project Quilting Challenge 4, Barn Quilts; "Old Maid, Re-made"

Since I live in Kentucky where the Quilt Barn Trail is well established, I decided to choose my block from a barn in my area. I found the photo online of a barn that is about an hour’s drive from my house. The block is called Old Maid’s Puzzle and it’s a simple, old fashioned block. According to the book “5,500 Quilt Block Designs” by Maggie Malone this block was first published in 1895. My loosely formed plan was to modify the block to make something more colorful and modern looking. I made 6 Old Maid’s Puzzle blocks out of black and white fabric. Three had black triangles on a white background and three had white triangles on a black background. Then I cut each of these blocks in half diagonally. I paired a light half and a dark half and joined them with a bright colored strip in between. I tried these new blocks in several layouts until I found the one I liked best. I added a border that included additional Old Maid’s Puzzle blocks in the traditional pattern. This quilt measures 29” x 38”.

Midwest Corn

Project Quilting #3-4 Our Guild (DeKalb County Quilter's Guild) has this as their logo. I simplified the logo and think it would make a smashing barn quilt block. Especially here in the midwest! The barn quilts I've seen are bold, simple designs made to be seen across fields. This is 21" square - pieced and appliqued with a bit of fuzzy yarn couched around the corn. (I just have a "thing" for fuzzy yarn and sometimes corn is hairy!) Lizz Ploppert, Sycamore, IL

If I Had a Barn

Marcia Wachuta Marcia's Crafty Sewing and Quilting Boscobel, WI

Measures 14" X 24"

I imagined I would have a large barn. So large, that it wouldn't even fit on my quilt. It would be huge! I would fill it with quilts, fabric, and sewing machines. People would come to sew and create quilts everyday in my imaginary barn with my imaginary barn quilt on it.